By now you've probably seen the news that dLive is leaving Steem for a blockchain that appears to be of their own devising. They appear to have been using Steem to support their development and gather users, all the while secretly working to abandon it in favor of their own system.
I'm sure there will be plenty of posts about that, but I want to talk about the way Steemit Inc. has enabled this by the closed-doors method they use to determine their large delegations. While the blockchain offers large potential of transaction permanency and transparency, many of the transactions with the highest impact on Steem rewards are done completely out of sight of the community, between Steemit Inc. and the developers of dApps, exchanges, and other projects.
Currently these projects are supported through the Steemit Inc. account @misterdelegation, in addition to the 2 million SP that was removed from dLive today:
| Account | Delegated SP |
|---|---|
| @binance-hot | 1,011.946 |
| @bittrex | 10,077.207 |
| @busy.pay | 506,517.828 |
| @dsound | 995,451.082 |
| @dtube | 2,023,891.097 |
| @esteemapp | 505,973.156 |
| @fundition | 1,005,303.922 |
| @mack-bot | 255,162.772 |
| @musing | 338,822.501 |
| @poloniex | 10,077.207 |
| @sndbox | 150,884.195 |
| @spaminator | 2,699,869.612 |
| @steemcleaners | 1,515,917.268 |
| @steemhunt | 1,005,894.668 |
| @steemit-jp | 251,473.654 |
| @steempress-io | 1,005,894.693 |
| @tasteem | 1,005,303.885 |
| @trendings-grace | 344,951.310 |
| @utopian-io | 1,986,477.342 |
While many of these accounts are doubtlessly doing good things for Steem and have the base blockchain layer's best interests in mind, and maybe even all of them do, what dLive has shown us is that a constructive attitude from recipients of Steemit delegation cannot be trusted. Either Steemit did not impose sufficient conditions upon their delegation, or dLive violated them.
Which brings us to the real problem, which is that nobody knows the conditions of these delegations. They're made in secret, and kept secret, and over seventeen million Steemit Inc. SP are being used with no public declaration of the purpose and the conditions. That's over 10% of the active SP on the whole platform.
We're supposed to believe that Steemit Inc.'s process for determining their large delegations works to ensure that they're used for the benefit of the greater community. That belief has gone up in flames today.
It's time that this process became open and aboveboard. We need to know about the conditions and the process for receiving Steemit Inc. delegations, and we need applications for them to be available to any project that qualifies. No more back-channel negotiations. Take the blockchain value of transparency and apply it to Steem's largest business transactions.
If Steemit Inc. is unwilling to do this, hopefully some of the projects I've mentioned above will take it on themselves to offer information on the delegations they're receiving and what is required from them in return.